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New testimonies from Palestinian children
tortured by Israeli authorities

Israel/Palestine

Ben Norton on June 5, 2014

Yesterday, The Legal Center for Arab Minority
Rights in Israel
(Adalah), released a press release titled “Adalah to Attorney General:
Shocking testimonies from Palestinian children who were tortured during arrest
and interrogation.” The byline of the release serves as a chilling introduction
to a recent investigation’s horrific findings:[Israeli] Investigators threatened children with
beatings, isolation, torturing their fathers and raping their mothers and
sisters; children were denied food for dozens of hours unless they confessed to
the charges against them.Adalah has sent an “urgent letter” to Israeli
Attorney General (AG) Yehuda Weinstein, “demanding an end to the practice of
physical and psychological torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian
children from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) during their arrest and
interrogation by Israeli security personnel,” and calling for open criminal
investigations so that those responsible can face due punishment for their
serious crimes.The letter was sent on 1 June 2014. As of the
writing of this present article, no response has been received (or, if a
response has been received, it has not yet been made public).In its letter, Adalah relays the findings of a
recent investigation conducted by Defense for Children International/Palestine Section
(DCI/PS). The organization’s lawyers compiled 21 testimonies made by
Palestinian children who had been arrested, interrogated, and tortured by
Israeli authorities. In its press release, Adalah writesThe dangerous practices described in the
testimonies constitute serious criminal offenses such as assault, damage,
threat, sexual harassment and other unlawful activity committed by security
authorities, ranging from soldiers, to GSS interrogators, and to prison
wardens.It goes without saying such practices are in
blatant violation of both Israeli and international law. Adalah’s attorneys
also noted that Israel
is in direct violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC) treaty, to which it is a signatory. The CRC
dictates that authorities immediately inform the child and any relatives as to
what exactly is being charged against them (Israel regularly ignores this
basic, fundamental right for many Palestinians, regardless of age—even Palestinian legislators).
The CRC furthermore prohibits the use of physical or physiological pressure in
interrogation and explicitly “forbids children’s exposure to any type of abuse,
torture, humiliation and inhuman treatment.”To those who pay close attention to Israel’s
internal affairs, this investigation may not necessarily be surprising. Just last year, in its
periodic review of Israel’s
child rights record, the CRC expressed “its deepest concern about the reported
practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested,
prosecuted and detained by the military and the police, and about the State
party’s failure to end these practices in spite of repeated concerns expressed
by treaty bodies.”The CRC corroborated much of what we will see in
the following testimonies, including systematic “physical and verbal violence,
humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack,
threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves
or members of their family, restricted access to toilet, food and water.” The
CRC report even explained that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
used Palestinian children as human shields multiple times.What this new investigation does offer us,
however, is a more detailed picture of what many Palestinian children in
occupied Palestine
must go through, based on first-hand accounts of the brave young survivors
themselves.The following is a collection of points made in
the children’s testimonies, as outlined in Adalah’s press release:- The majority of arrests were made during
late-hour night raids.– Palestinians’ homes were “violently broken
into by dozens of soldiers who intimidated both the children and their
families.” In 100% of the testimonies, children said they were bound and
blindfolded, before being transferred hundreds of meters away in military
vehicles.– In many of the testimonies, children revealed
that soldiers went into their rooms, “aggressively woke them up, and shackled
their hands and feet while they were still in bed.”– In one testimony, a child who had been
sleeping in his bed when the “brutal kicks of the soldiers” woke him up, had to
have his finger amputated. Israeli soldiers ignored his wounded finger, tying
up his hands and feet, for over 12 hours, leading to an inoperable infection.– When family members inquired as to why exactly
their young children were being harassed, assaulted, bound, blindfolded, and
taken away in the middle of the night, Israeli soldiers often replied by beating
and insulting them.– In the preponderance of the arrests, neither
children nor their families knew why they were being taken away. Family members
would not be allowed to accompany the minor, and they would not be informed as
to where Israeli authorities would be taking them.– While soldiers were transferring the detained
children to interrogation sites, soldiers regularly “used extreme physical and
verbal abuse against them, including beatings, smashing the child’s head
against a wall, threats of violence, and threats of sexual assault and rape.”– In one testimony, a child was separated from
his family so that soldiers could interrogate him. When finished, the soldiers
ordered in four of the child’s friends, to see their peer being beaten before their
eyes. In this torturous event, the detained child “confessed” that he, along
with his friends, had thrown stones. Later, however, the same child admitted he
had only confessed in order to stop the beatings, and he withdrew his
“confessions.”This is what Israeli officials do to Palestinian
children who they think threw a few stones.Adalah’s press release also notes that Israeli
investigators, at interrogation and detention sites, regularly employed
interrogation techniques that are forbidden under international law:– 100% of the detained children’s interrogations
lasted many hours. A majority said they were denied food, water, and access to
a toilet. In some cases, children, who had been denied food for dozens of
hours, were told they would only be fed if they confessed.– 100% of the detained children “were left
handcuffed on both their hands and feet while seated on a low chair.”– Most of the detained children were stripped
naked and strip-searched numerous times. Those “who refused to be strip-searched
while naked were violently assaulted by the wardens.”– 0 of the investigations were conducted in the
company of a lawyer or relative, in flagrant violation of Israeli law.– When children asked to meet with a lawyer,
investigators told them it was “forbidden.”– 100% of children were held in solidarity
confinement for multiple days, and in some cases even weeks. One child
testified that he had been held in uninterrupted solidarity confinement for 28
days.and– 100% of children “described their cells as
being in very poor conditions.” Cells were windowless and incredibly small;
they held only a small mattress and a foul-smelling toilet. It was not
permitted that children lean on the rough walls. The cells were also lit 24
hours per day by a bright light. This light “hurt the children’s eyes” and made
it difficult for children to fall asleep; from this forced sleep deprivation,
children lost a sense of time, and presumably suffered from other ailments
associated with sleep loss.This is by no means the first time Adalah has
contacted Israel’s
Attorney General. On 22 March 2007, the
human rights organization contacted AG Menachem Mazuz, requesting a criminal
investigation. Israel’s
General Security Services’ (GSS) had been tampering with political and legal
documents published by Arab Israeli NGOs and scholars.Two months later, Mazuz responded to the letter.
He defended the GSS’s actions, saying they were “undertaken in coordination and
consultation with the relevant parties within the legal apparatus,” reaffirming
the GSS’s own insistence that it “is required to thwart the subversive activity
of entities seeking to harm the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish
and democratic state, even if their activity is conducted through democratic
means.”A year before that, on 13 August 2006,
Adalah placed an ad in Haaretz.
The somewhat unconventional ad was an open letter to AG Mazuz. In it, the
organization wroteWe wish to draw your attention to the judgment
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which
convicted senior commanders and politicians for killing civilians and the
destruction of villages and houses, among other charges. The Tribunal imposed
sentences of between 15 and 45 years’ imprisonment.This provocative ad followed another, published
in the same paper—Israel’s
oldest newspaper, and the most widely read English-language Israeli
publication—only 10 days before. In this bold public warning, somewhat
reminiscent of cigarette warning labels—an arresting, vibrant red border
contrasting strikingly with drab black and white text—a variety of Israeli
human rights organizations, including Adalah, Amnesty International, the Arab
Association for Human Rights, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel,
called upon the Israeli government to act urgently
towards the declaration of a ceasefire that will lead to the end of killing and
destruction in Israel, Lebanon and the
Gaza Strip, and remove the threat hanging over the lives and property of every
civilian …WE WARN THAT:employing military force against civilian
targets, bombing residential areas, turning thousands of people into refugees,
and causing long-term damage to civilian infrastructure isFORBIDDEN UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAWAdalah’s most recent letter might lack the
panache of its missive brethren, yet its substance is just as worrisome.We patiently await Yehuda Weinstein’s response.
If history is any indicator, nevertheless (and it almost always is), the reply
will not be positive, and the Israeli Attorney General—the individual in charge
of the legal system of what is often called “the only democracy in the Middle
East”—will fail to do his job. Israel
will still be a country in which Palestinians live under a completely different
set of laws.

An Israeli human rights organisation has accused the government of torturing
children after it emerged some were kept in outdoor cages during winter.The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) published a report
which claimed children suspected of minor crimes were subjected to “public
caging”, threats and acts of sexual violence and military trials without
representation.It came as the government’s Public Petitions Committee held a hearing to
discuss the issue, which the PCATI said must be addressed with a change to the
law.The country’s Public Defender’s Office (PDO) recently released details of
one particularly shocking visit by its lawyers to a detention facility.“During our visit, held during a fierce storm that hit the state, attorneys
met detainees who described to them a shocking picture: in the middle of the
night dozens of detainees were transferred to the external iron cages built
outside the IPS transition facility in Ramla,” the PDO wrote on its website.“It turns out that this procedure, under which prisoners waited outside in
cages, lasted for several months, and was verified by other officials.”Although the practice of keeping children caged was reported to have lasted
for months, there is no suggestion that the individuals were so detained for
that period. According to the Jerusalem Post, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni
called for the practice of keeping children in cages to be stopped as soon as
she learned of it, and the prison service issued a statement saying the
situation had been improved following the “criticism”.The PCATI said this was not enough, and called for the country’s relatively
high threshold for what can be classed “acts of abuse” to be lowered in the
case of children.Their report argued: “Torture is a means of attacking an individual’s
fundamental modes of psychological and social functioning” as described in the
Istanbul Protocol. Furthermore, “torture can impact a child directly or
indirectly. The impact can be due to the child’s having been tortured or
detained, the torture of parents or close family members or witnessing torture
and violence.”It said the incident in Ramla was just one example of a broad range of
abuses being suffered.Yesterday the Knesset committee said Israeli law as it currently exists was
being violated by the manner of arrest and detention conditions of Palestinian
children, the Post reported.The committee also took issue with the fact that the government appeared not
to keep records of the frequency or scope of disputed practices like midnight
arrests.The PCATI quoted figures from the campaign group Defence for Children
International's Palestine section, saying: “The majority of Palestinian child
detainees are charged with throwing stones, and 74 per cent experience physical
violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.”It said Israel
was the only country to systematically prosecute children in its military
courts, and added that “no Israeli children come into contact with the military
court system”.Update: After original publication of its report, the Public Committee
Against Torture in Israel
released an amended version, acknowledging that the information from the Public
Defender’s Office about child prisoners being kept in cages did not refer
specifically to Palestinians. We have amended our report accordingly and
wish to make the position clear.

New testimonies from Palestinian children tortured by Israeli authorities

Israel/Palestine

Ben Norton on June 5, 2014

Yesterday, The Legal Center for Arab Minority
Rights in Israel
(Adalah), released a press release titled “Adalah to Attorney General:
Shocking testimonies from Palestinian children who were tortured during arrest
and interrogation.” The byline of the release serves as a chilling introduction
to a recent investigation’s horrific findings:[Israeli] Investigators threatened children with
beatings, isolation, torturing their fathers and raping their mothers and
sisters; children were denied food for dozens of hours unless they confessed to
the charges against them.Adalah has sent an “urgent letter” to Israeli
Attorney General (AG) Yehuda Weinstein, “demanding an end to the practice of
physical and psychological torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian
children from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) during their arrest and
interrogation by Israeli security personnel,” and calling for open criminal
investigations so that those responsible can face due punishment for their
serious crimes.The letter was sent on 1 June 2014. As of the
writing of this present article, no response has been received (or, if a
response has been received, it has not yet been made public).In its letter, Adalah relays the findings of a
recent investigation conducted by Defense for Children International/Palestine Section
(DCI/PS). The organization’s lawyers compiled 21 testimonies made by
Palestinian children who had been arrested, interrogated, and tortured by
Israeli authorities. In its press release, Adalah writesThe dangerous practices described in the
testimonies constitute serious criminal offenses such as assault, damage,
threat, sexual harassment and other unlawful activity committed by security
authorities, ranging from soldiers, to GSS interrogators, and to prison
wardens.It goes without saying such practices are in
blatant violation of both Israeli and international law. Adalah’s attorneys
also noted that Israel
is in direct violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child (CRC) treaty, to which it is a signatory. The CRC
dictates that authorities immediately inform the child and any relatives as to
what exactly is being charged against them (Israel regularly ignores this
basic, fundamental right for many Palestinians, regardless of age—even Palestinian legislators).
The CRC furthermore prohibits the use of physical or physiological pressure in
interrogation and explicitly “forbids children’s exposure to any type of abuse,
torture, humiliation and inhuman treatment.”To those who pay close attention to Israel’s
internal affairs, this investigation may not necessarily be surprising. Just last year, in its
periodic review of Israel’s
child rights record, the CRC expressed “its deepest concern about the reported
practice of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian children arrested,
prosecuted and detained by the military and the police, and about the State
party’s failure to end these practices in spite of repeated concerns expressed
by treaty bodies.”The CRC corroborated much of what we will see in
the following testimonies, including systematic “physical and verbal violence,
humiliation, painful restraints, hooding of the head and face in a sack,
threatened with death, physical violence, and sexual assault against themselves
or members of their family, restricted access to toilet, food and water.” The
CRC report even explained that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
used Palestinian children as human shields multiple times.What this new investigation does offer us,
however, is a more detailed picture of what many Palestinian children in
occupied Palestine
must go through, based on first-hand accounts of the brave young survivors
themselves.The following is a collection of points made in
the children’s testimonies, as outlined in Adalah’s press release:- The majority of arrests were made during
late-hour night raids.– Palestinians’ homes were “violently broken
into by dozens of soldiers who intimidated both the children and their
families.” In 100% of the testimonies, children said they were bound and
blindfolded, before being transferred hundreds of meters away in military
vehicles.– In many of the testimonies, children revealed
that soldiers went into their rooms, “aggressively woke them up, and shackled
their hands and feet while they were still in bed.”– In one testimony, a child who had been
sleeping in his bed when the “brutal kicks of the soldiers” woke him up, had to
have his finger amputated. Israeli soldiers ignored his wounded finger, tying
up his hands and feet, for over 12 hours, leading to an inoperable infection.– When family members inquired as to why exactly
their young children were being harassed, assaulted, bound, blindfolded, and
taken away in the middle of the night, Israeli soldiers often replied by beating
and insulting them.– In the preponderance of the arrests, neither
children nor their families knew why they were being taken away. Family members
would not be allowed to accompany the minor, and they would not be informed as
to where Israeli authorities would be taking them.– While soldiers were transferring the detained
children to interrogation sites, soldiers regularly “used extreme physical and
verbal abuse against them, including beatings, smashing the child’s head
against a wall, threats of violence, and threats of sexual assault and rape.”– In one testimony, a child was separated from
his family so that soldiers could interrogate him. When finished, the soldiers
ordered in four of the child’s friends, to see their peer being beaten before their
eyes. In this torturous event, the detained child “confessed” that he, along
with his friends, had thrown stones. Later, however, the same child admitted he
had only confessed in order to stop the beatings, and he withdrew his
“confessions.”This is what Israeli officials do to Palestinian
children who they think threw a few stones.Adalah’s press release also notes that Israeli
investigators, at interrogation and detention sites, regularly employed
interrogation techniques that are forbidden under international law:– 100% of the detained children’s interrogations
lasted many hours. A majority said they were denied food, water, and access to
a toilet. In some cases, children, who had been denied food for dozens of
hours, were told they would only be fed if they confessed.– 100% of the detained children “were left
handcuffed on both their hands and feet while seated on a low chair.”– Most of the detained children were stripped
naked and strip-searched numerous times. Those “who refused to be strip-searched
while naked were violently assaulted by the wardens.”– 0 of the investigations were conducted in the
company of a lawyer or relative, in flagrant violation of Israeli law.– When children asked to meet with a lawyer,
investigators told them it was “forbidden.”– 100% of children were held in solidarity
confinement for multiple days, and in some cases even weeks. One child
testified that he had been held in uninterrupted solidarity confinement for 28
days.and– 100% of children “described their cells as
being in very poor conditions.” Cells were windowless and incredibly small;
they held only a small mattress and a foul-smelling toilet. It was not
permitted that children lean on the rough walls. The cells were also lit 24
hours per day by a bright light. This light “hurt the children’s eyes” and made
it difficult for children to fall asleep; from this forced sleep deprivation,
children lost a sense of time, and presumably suffered from other ailments
associated with sleep loss.This is by no means the first time Adalah has
contacted Israel’s
Attorney General. On 22 March 2007, the
human rights organization contacted AG Menachem Mazuz, requesting a criminal
investigation. Israel’s
General Security Services’ (GSS) had been tampering with political and legal
documents published by Arab Israeli NGOs and scholars.Two months later, Mazuz responded to the letter.
He defended the GSS’s actions, saying they were “undertaken in coordination and
consultation with the relevant parties within the legal apparatus,” reaffirming
the GSS’s own insistence that it “is required to thwart the subversive activity
of entities seeking to harm the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish
and democratic state, even if their activity is conducted through democratic
means.”A year before that, on 13 August 2006,
Adalah placed an ad in Haaretz.
The somewhat unconventional ad was an open letter to AG Mazuz. In it, the
organization wroteWe wish to draw your attention to the judgment
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which
convicted senior commanders and politicians for killing civilians and the
destruction of villages and houses, among other charges. The Tribunal imposed
sentences of between 15 and 45 years’ imprisonment.This provocative ad followed another, published
in the same paper—Israel’s
oldest newspaper, and the most widely read English-language Israeli
publication—only 10 days before. In this bold public warning, somewhat
reminiscent of cigarette warning labels—an arresting, vibrant red border
contrasting strikingly with drab black and white text—a variety of Israeli
human rights organizations, including Adalah, Amnesty International, the Arab
Association for Human Rights, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel,
called upon the Israeli government to act urgently
towards the declaration of a ceasefire that will lead to the end of killing and
destruction in Israel, Lebanon and the
Gaza Strip, and remove the threat hanging over the lives and property of every
civilian …WE WARN THAT:employing military force against civilian
targets, bombing residential areas, turning thousands of people into refugees,
and causing long-term damage to civilian infrastructure isFORBIDDEN UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAWAdalah’s most recent letter might lack the
panache of its missive brethren, yet its substance is just as worrisome.We patiently await Yehuda Weinstein’s response.
If history is any indicator, nevertheless (and it almost always is), the reply
will not be positive, and the Israeli Attorney General—the individual in charge
of the legal system of what is often called “the only democracy in the Middle
East”—will fail to do his job. Israel
will still be a country in which Palestinians live under a completely different
set of laws.